Vitamins: The Limits of Nutraceuticals

​ Vitamins: The Limits of Nutraceuticals With the greatest quantities of food available on earth, America is suffering increasing levels of malnutrition. This is the major source of the rise in health care costs as inadequate nutrition reduces body energy and function, and empty calories add burdens to digestion, elimination, and weight management.

The articles on Vitamins C, E and B have shown that what is sold as a vitamin is actually just one ingredient of the vitamin complex. As a result, we will get less benefit when taking vitamins separated from their food source. Separating, or fractionating, the compound into single, incomplete parts transforms an active, biodynamic nutrient into isolated chemicals with far less benefit. The sum of the parts is not equal to the whole.

With respect to vitamins, nutraceutical companies are essentially using food components for medicinal purposes. Although they are using something “natural,” they are making it most unnatural by extracting the nutrient from the environment from which it derives its power and purpose. When components are isolated and unsupported by missing cofactors, the nutraceutical fails to support health in a manner not much different from pharmaceuticals. Identifying the actual nutrition in a supplement, assessing your needs, and determining how the body will handle that nutrition is key to determining how beneficial a vitamin supplement will be.

Like the pharmaceutical, there are times of crisis when the supplement does give the body a break and allows the body to repair itself. We see this in our daily need for a healthy diet, but long use of a fractionated supplement will lead to an imbalance (unless only that fraction is missing from the diet, as with B12 in vegans). Nutraceuticals that use whole foods will have the power of the complexed nutrition of the food. There are limits to how much food can be packed into a capsule, and how well the finished product can be digested and its contents made available to the body.

We also need to shift from viewing vitamins as necessary in small amounts to prevent deficiency diseases to vital nutrients affecting many body systems and required in different amounts by those different systems for different purposes. Although the minimum daily requirement may prevent a dramatic deficiency disease like scurvy or beriberi, this small amount is insufficient to achieve health. These classical deficiency diseases are simply the end stage of long term depletion of body resources of the nutrient. Symptoms of a vitamin deficiency may not reach the level of disease diagnosis but be severe enough to reduce the quality and quantity of life.

As noted in the article on Vitamin C, deficiency may appear as bleeding gums (gingivitis), easy bruising, connective tissue problems, depression, etc. Note that these are symptoms in deficiency of the Vitamin C complex, not of ascorbic acid. Vitamin B1 deficiency may not reach the level of rickets, but symptoms such as weakness, pain in the limbs, shortness of breath, and swollen feet or legs will impact the life of the individual. There are likely other B vitamins that are near deficiency levels, and taking a complex along with the B1 is necessary for balanced health.

In addition to different organ systems needing different amounts of an individual vitamin complex, different people have unique bodies requiring different amounts, as well. With processed food becoming a greater part of the modern diet, vitamin (and mineral) deficiencies are increasing as much of the nutrition is lost in every step from farm to table (or drive-thru). The output of the food industry is focused on bottom line results, which are improved by substituting industrial processes and replacing lost nutrition with chemical flavor enhancers.​ In essence, we are being manipulated by business interests who treat us as the final processing plant in a long line of mechanical and thermal treatment centers. Life processes do not work in that manner, and life cannot be maintained by lifeless chemical concoctions and fractionated foods. The next articles will look at minerals in the same manner as the articles on vitamins.Next article